Re: The Medical Gestapo

[Guest guest]

--- bianca3@... wrote:

> This is why I encourage everyone to read,

> Confessions Of A Medical

> Heretic, by S. Mendelsohn, M.D. One of his

> goals in writing the

> book was to mobilize people into action before they

> get hurt by the

> establishment. And if you are involved in home

> schooling or some

> alternative type lifestyle (home birth, unassisted

> child birth, NT

> feeding to kids, home funerals, etc) you may want to

> read the Child Abuse

> Industry, by Pride. Forewarned is forearmed.

>

> Bianca

>

It's interesting that just three message after this

one, I got a message from a vaccination group, and its

subject also contained the word gestapo. Below is its

text.

Friends,

I just read in TV Guide that a new drama pilot will

air on ABC--and possibly become a new series this

fall--will be called, " EIS " , starring Adam Goldberg.

ABC is betting the drama series will achieve the same

success as CBS's CSI-Crime Scene Investigation.

However, As Ellison's article (below) about the

Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) shows, this

division of the CDC has a history of insidious

Gestapo-like tactics, justified on the basis of the

(false) disease paradigm that justifies mandatory

vaccination. It is also no coincidence that this

series got a green light based on the recent

bio-weapons scares, and the CDC's lobbying to get

states to pass the Medical Emergency Powers Act.

Glorification of this agency, particularly the EIS, is

not only going to provide a false picture of

infectious disease (as all medical dramas do), but it

will come at a time when we are trying to defeat the

pernicious legislation most states are facing now.

Maybe we should write letters criticizing this pilot

when it comes on?

====

AIDS; WORDS FROM THE FRONT

By Ellison

Spin Magazine, Dec. 1993

Since 1949, the Epidemic Intelligence Service has

infiltrated hospitals, health departments, and

newspaper offices around the world. Ellison

exposes how this elite, semi-secret wing of the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has managed

to stifle debate about everything from swine flu to

AIDS.

At 1600 Clifton Road in Atlanta, Georgia, the mammoth

brick towers of the centers for Disease Control and

Prevention sprawl across clean manicured lawns. This

is the Pentagon of government health - a $2 billion

military prevention agency that monitors broken limbs

and illness, and evangelizes on everything from

malaria pills to gun control. Tucked into the midst of

this labyrinth is the hub of a little known but

extremely powerful network of health professionals.

Think of its as the CIA of health care: the Epidemic

Intelligence Service (EIS).

Although few people know of its existence, the

resources of the EIS and its reach into public life

are extensive. Nearly 2,000 EIS trainees occupy key

positions in national and international health care.

Former United States Surgeon General H.

is a member, as are two other assistant

Surgeon Generals. Mann and Merson,

past and present heads, respectively, of the World

Health Organization's global AIDS Program, both

trained with the EIS. Universities, health

departments, private practices, dentist offices,

veterinary hospitals, and insurance and pharmaceutical

companies are all stocked with members. Others work

within tax-exempt foundations, including the Ford,

Rockefeller, and ph Kennedy Foundations and the

Rand Corporation, helping direct the spending of trust

funds on medical and other projects.

Even reporters who cover health-related organizations

and medical breakthroughs have graduated from the EIS

program. The New York Time's chief medical

correspondent, Lawrence Altman, is a member, as is

Bruce Dan, former ABC News medical editor and former

senior editor of the prestigious Journal of the

American Medical Association. Marvin Turck, the editor

at the University of Washington'' Journal of

Infectious Diseases, joined EIS in 1960. All have

undergone six weeks of intensive epidemiological

training, and then served for two years, on CDC

salary, in state and local health departments around

the country. Many worked in the CDC itself. After

completing their field experience, EIS alumni are free

to pursue any career they desire. But all understand

the implicit agreement that they function as a

permanent reserve for the CDC, gathering information

about potential epidemics and reporting it back to

headquarters.

Taken at face value, the wide pool of EIS graduates

would seem no more ominous than a clique of university

alumni. But the EIS's mandate is broad and its

potential powers daunting. In a declared emergency,

this uniformed branch of the Armed Services has the

authority to suspend many individual rights. In

peacetime, the EIS can control what we know about

illnesses and when we know it. So far, it has taken

the public to the brink of hysteria over illnesses

from swine flu to AIDS.

EIS was the brainchild of public health expert

Langmuir. In 1949, the CDC was interested in

expanding beyond its mandate for malaria control, but

needed justification. It tapped Langmuir from his

teaching position at the s Hopkins University

School of Hygiene and Public Health. Langmuir's

arrival was a coup for the CDC - he possessed a

security clearance as one of the few scientific

advisers to the Defence Department's biological and

chemical warfare program. The Cold War was raging at

that time, and civil defence ranked high in government

priorities.

Langmuir proposed that the CDC build a comprehensive

surveillance system of trained individuals in all

sectors of public and private life to detect the

earliest signs of a biological warfare attack. " In the

event of war the [EIS members] could be returned to

active duty with the Public Health Service and

assigned to strategic areas to fulfil the functions

for which they were trained, " said Langmuir. Federal

officials responded with millions of dollars, and the

first class entered in July 1951. The symbol of the

EIS reflected its focus on activism instead of

scientific research - pair of shoes worn through with

holes.

But biological warfare never struck, and the EIS has

justified its existence over the years by adapting its

mandate to include civil medical emergencies. Langmuir

himself noted that the warfare infrastructure could be

used to control any natural epidemic, using quarantine

measures, mass immunizations, and other emergency

techniques.

This country experiences more than 1,000 clustered

outbreaks of disease each year - roughly one every

eight hours - including colds, flu, hepatitis, and

numerous noninfectious conditions, all running their

course and disappearing, and often eluding scientific

explanation. The EIS, it was reasoned, could detect

most of those clusters as soon as they popped up, and

in its military style treat selected outbreaks as

emergencies on the assumption they were contagious.

And today, the EIS's role is so broad as to include

any " epidemic, " including those of violence; for

example, EIS officers were called to monitor the L.A.

riots following the Rodney King verdict and to examine

injuries after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

But it's the annual outbreak of influenza virus - the

flu - that has fuelled the EIS's most engaging

battles, ironically with dire consequences to public

health on occasion. In the spring of 1957, news

reached the U.S. that the flu was devastating nations

of the Far East. The CDC rang the alarm of an imminent

and devastating epidemic, and Congress responded by

providing money to allow the agency to crash-produce a

vaccine, which nevertheless arrived too late. In the

end, the mild flu disappeared quite spontaneously,

leaving behind none of the predicted destruction. Some

public-health experts even questioned

whether the hype-up scare may have only stimulated

vaccine sales.

Langmuir dipped into the new funds from that heralded

debacle and expanded the EIS. By 1976, the EIS network

had become so widespread that it could detect even

the tiniest outbreaks of illness. When five soldiers

caught a flu that January, the alarm bells sounded

again. This time the disease was nicknamed " swine

flu, " based on the speculation that pigs served as the

reservoir for the virus. President Ford and Congress

panicked, throwing vast new sums of money into another

flu vaccine. Then came an unexpected wrinkle: The

program stalled when insurers discovered that the

vaccine itself could produce extraordinary side

effects, ranging from severe fevers and malaise to

paralysis and death.

Now the EIS network sprang into action. Except for the

five soldiers, no flu epidemic could be found, and

the EIS was placed on full alert to detect any

outbreak. Unless Congress could be convinced the

danger was real, the vaccine program would end. As

described by Gordon and Max -Witts in

their book Anatomy of an Epidemic, the large

Auditorium A, located in CDC headquarters in Atlanta,

became the command center - called the " war room. "

Set up especially for this occasion, it contained

" banks of telephones, teleprinters, and computers, the

hardware for an unprecedented monitoring system which,

to work, also required a typing pool, photocopy

machines, and doctors sitting at rows of desks in the

center of the room. " Experts worked around the clock,

week after week, chasing down every rumour of flu

outbreaks.

A cluster of pneumonia cases suddenly appeared in

Philadelphia, days after American Legion members had

returned home from their July convention. On Monday

morning, August 2, after receiving word of this

outbreak, personnel in the CDC's swine-flu war room

established contact with Jim Beecham, a brand new EIS

officer on assignment in the Philadelphia health

department. The CDC could not directly intervene in

the situation without an invitation, and Beecham

helped arrange one immediately. Within hours three EIS

officers flew down to Philadelphia. They were joined

within days by dozens of CDC experts.

When the CDC personnel arrived, pre-positioned EIS

members such as Beecham and top health adviser

Sharrar stopped obeying local authorities and began

following orders from the incoming CDC team. The CDC

began fomenting wild rumours that this " Legionnaire's

disease " was the beginning of the swine flu epidemic.

The media proved cooperative; the New York Times

assigned none other than Lawrence Altman, an EIS

alumnus, to cover the story. With nationwide hysteria

rapidly developing, Congress suddenly changed its mind

and approved the swine flu vaccine. Some 50 million

Americans were inoculated over the next several

months, ultimately producing at least 1,000 cases of

severe nerve damage and paralysis, dozens of deaths,

and nearly $100 million in liability claims.

Meanwhile, within days of the legislative approval,

the EIS team finally acknowledged the pneumonia was

not related to swine flu, but the announcement came

too late.

The swine flu never showed up, and the fiasco nearly

destroyed the CDC's reputation. But the EIS executed

damage control by blaming Legionnaire's disease on a

newly isolated bacterium. In reality, the stricken

Legionnaires had been elderly men, several with kidney

transplants, who had become extraordinarily drunk at

the convention - all classic risk factors for

pneumonia. Such minor disease outbreaks are relatively

common, though rarely fall into the public spotlight.

But the CDC had succeeded in scaring the nation about

a harmless bacterium, one found in plumbing of almost

any building.

The CDC needed another crisis epidemic to revive its

heroic image and expand its mandate. In 1981, the

White House was considering cutting the CDC budget by

23 percent. AIDS appeared not a moment too soon, in

the same year.

EIS officer Wayne Shandera, on active assignment in

the Los Angeles health department, received a call

from Gottlieb, a young immunologist at the

UCLA Medical Center. Four patients had pneumocystis

carinii pneumonia and serious immune deficiencies.

Shandera had already heard a report of a fifth such

case. One or two cases usually meant nothing; five

seemed more plausible as an outbreak. And all five men

were young homosexuals, a coincidence which could

possibly indicate a sexual link. These five cases were

the official start of what later came to be known as

the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)

epidemic.

Shandera forwarded the data to his unofficial bosses

at the CDC. According to Randy Shilts in his book And

the Band Played On, Curran, the CDC official who

saw the report, wrote " Hot stuff. Hot stuff " across

the top and rushed it into publication. New reports

were trickling in of dying male homosexuals, most of

whom also suffered from a rare skin cancer known as

Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (KSOI)

Task Force to manage the investigation, loaded with

such EIS members as Harold Jaffe and Guinan.

Virtually all of the first 50 cases admitted to using

poppers, the liquid nitrite drug widely popular among

homosexual men for its aphrodisiac properties.

Scientists had not studied the long-term effects of

this inhaled drug, but its chemical structure was

known for its severe toxicity and ability to cause

cancer. Nevertheless, a cursory study comparing popper

use in disease-free gays with those with AIDS led the

EIS to rule out poppers as the culprit.

The Task Force then mobilized the EIS network to

define sexually linked clusters of cases and to prove

the syndrome had " spread " beyond homosexual men.

Clusters were not hard to find, since the AIDS cases

were extremely promiscuous men with hundreds or

thousands of sexual encounters, and at least one

instance of sexual contact with another AIDS case. EIS

officers such as Auerbach, assigned to the Los

Angeles County Department of Public Health,

interviewed these men and confirmed the prediction.

Meanwhile, following the model of hepatitis-B

transmission, EIS agents hunted down every heroin

addict and blood transfusion recipient, including

hemophiliacs, with conditions vaguely resembling the

immune deficiencies in homosexuals. EIS personnel

scoured hospitals and monitored local health

departments for patients, and within months found a

small handful of heroin users with opportunistic

infections. EIS member Bruce Evatt and Dale Lawrence

tracked down a hemophiliac in Colorado, dying

primarily of internal bleeding, who also happened to

have pneumonia. EIS agent Harry Haverkos travelled to

Florida and Haiti to find impoverished Haitians with

opportunistic tuberculosis. Instantly the heroin

addicts, the hemophiliac, and the Haitian were all

relabeled as AIDS cases, and the CDC trumpeted the

news that AIDS had " spread " outside the homosexual

community.

The biomedical research establishment bought the line

and scrambled to find a virus. Scientists first turned

to their familiar microbes; Epstein-Barr virus and

cytomegalovirus, both known for many years through

herpes virus research, were each blamed by different

factions. But the fate of AIDS research was sealed

almost from the beginning. Francis, an EIS

member since 1971 who had gained notoriety for

implementing heavy-handed public health tactics when

working for the World Health Organization in the third

world, had by 1981 risen to a high position within the

CDC's Hepatitis Laboratories Division. He had also

earned a graduate degree studying feline retroviruses.

Within just 11 days after the first report of AIDS

cases appeared in June 1981, Francis placed a

telephone call to Myron Essex, his former research

supervisor at Harvard University. With no evidence

whatsoever to back up his claims, Francis insisted

that the new syndrome must be caused by a retrovirus -

with a long latency period between infection and

disease. Only five AIDS patients officially existed,

yet Francis had already mapped out the entire future

of the disease.

Francis doggedly pushed his view whenever anyone would

lend him an ear, and even when no one would. " This is

the epidemic of the century, and every qualified

person should want to have a piece of the action, " he

would later say in a speech at the CDC.

Within a year, KSOI Task Force head Curran was

echoing the Francis hypothesis, as were other key CDC

staffers. Working with Essex, Francis lobbied their

close colleague, Gallo, a well-funded

retrovirus scientist at the National Institutes of

Health (NIH), to search for an AIDS virus.

Biggar, another EIS member at the NIH, helped mobilize

the huge federal institute behind the retrovirus hunt.

In 1983, the French scientist, Luc Montagnier,

discovered a new retrovirus, since named the human

immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and Gallo claimed

" co-discovery " one year later. When Gallo held a press

conference to announce the virus, the event set the

HIV hypothesis in stone as official federal dogma.

Francis and his fellow EIS agents had

triumphed, though remaining out of the spotlight.

With the EIS's help, the CDC and the federal

government have managed to inflate fear of AIDS into a

global paranoia, thereby feeding the machine that

keeps scores of EIS graduates in business - writing,

researching, analyzing, and otherwise cashing in on

the AIDS " epidemic. " Even when dissent scientists

manage to create an opening for honest debate about

AIDS, the EIS has masterfully exercised damage

control, learning to squelch embarrassing new twists

that threaten the prevailing dogma. In July of 1992,

during the Eight International Conference on AIDS in

Amsterdam, Newsweek suddenly published an article by

reporter Geoffrey Cowley on several HIV-negative AIDS

cases. Researchers at the AIDS conference interpreted

the article as a political green light, and began

pouring forth dozens of reports of previously

unmentioned AIDS patients without HIV, from both the

United States and Europe. The situation

began reeling out of control, re-opening the question

of whether HIV is the true cause of AIDS.

Fauci, director of AIDS Research at the NIH, and

Curran of the CDC raced to Amsterdam on Air

Force Two to take charge. The best they could do on

the spot was to listen to the reports, promising to

resolve the situation.

Three weeks later, the CDC sponsored a special meeting

at its Atlanta headquarters. The scientists reporting

HIV-free AIDS cases were invited, as was Cowley, the

Newsweek reporter. The unexplained AIDS cases were

relabeled idiopathic CD4+ lymphocytopenia, or ICL - so

as to break any connection between these cases and

AIDS. That was enough for Cowley. Since then, he has

not reported on AIDS cases without HIV, or even ICL.

Information about these same HIV-free AIDS cases had

been available to the media long before the public

episode, but had continually been censored. Lawrence

Altman, the EIS member who had become the head medical

writer for the New York Times, admitted to Science

magazine that he knew of cases for several months but

did not break the story because he didn't think it was

his paper's place to announce something the CDC was

not confident enough of to publish. The Times, of

course, has long

cultivated an image of publishing " all the news that's

fit to print. "

The era of infectious diseases in the industrialized

world, the age when most people died of tuberculosis,

malaria, yellow fever, or polio, ended long ago. But

the EIS, a relic of the past, has grown ever larger in

its membership and influence. Its clandestine methods

and near invisibility have allowed the CDC to

virtually manufacture epidemics, and to make the

whole process appear spontaneous. Now, as AIDS and the

EIS moves into the '90s, some members are beginning to

privately mourn the fat days of the mid- to late '80s,

when AIDS research dollars flowed most freely from

government coffers. Once again, the EIS may soon be

forced to justify its existence to Congress in order

to finance its ambitious program of centralized public

health surveillance. Cloaked in science, the EIS's

agenda threatens to expand public health controls over

private beliefs and life-styles. Healthy suggestions

are one thing; exploiting hysteria to impose emergency

powers is quite another.

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